Serial Number 047

OM Modern Redwood

*started on November 13, 2025

This guitar has been planned ever since I made the left handed OM with Redwood as the soundboard. The curiosity is if it will sound as good as the left handed guitar I built. Time will tell.

The guitar should be a little brighter since I will be using Bubinga back and sides with the Redwood soundboard. The left handed OM was built with Black Walnut.

I didn’t think the sound hole location that was used on the last guitar build would work with the cutaway. It was only after the body was together that I tried to see if the location would have worked out – and it would have. After this guitar the sound hole being on the opposite side would be the standard.

Laminated bracing is a standard at this point. I like the laminated bracing – I feel like there would be more strength and visual appeal. The extra work in making the laminated bracing is worth it – at least to me at this point.

I wanted to make another “rainbow edition” neck on this guitar as there were some good ideas that came up during the build of the Parlour guitar with the multi-tonewood neck. But I don’t think having so many different pieces of wood in the neck would be something people would gravitate towards.

I have seen Facebook posts of a boutique builder that uses a lot of tonewoods to make accents in their neck which I think is overkill. It does look cool and *could possibly be helping structurally since glue in stronger than the wood but I don’t believe that was the actual intention of why they did it.

After looking through the inventory list, I decided to go with Ash. I didn’t want something on the tan/orange side for the neck as the body is pretty much that kind of shade. I will also add a volute to the neck angle.

Something new will be used for the fingerboard – Royal Blackwood. I purchased a couple of these thinking it was something on the higher end from the “Blackwood” part of it but found out it wasn’t something special as it is man-made to be what it is.

A block of Ebony had been pulled at the same time as the Royal Blackwood fingerboard. I felt that some black would go with the colours that are being used in this build.

SPECS

Body Orchestra Model

Scale 25.34″

Top Redwood

Back Bubinga

Sides Bubinga

Neck Ash/Bloodwood strip

Fingerboard Royal Blackwood

Bridge Ebony

Tuning Machines Gotoh 381

Strings D’Addario EJ26 Phosphor Bronze